You Need A Budget

YNAB. Pretty amazing stuff. If you have read my Month Ahead post, you already know that we save up the income from one month to pay the entire bills for the next month - IE, all the paychecks we receive in May go for our bills and spending during the month of June.

I've heard about YNAB on the TMMO boards for quite some time, but I thought I was doing everything just fine myself. Well, after reading about it, yet again, on the TMMO board, I decided to see what all the fuss was about. They have a 30 day free trial that you can sign up for. After that if you choose to purchase the software, it's $60. I've only had it 3 days and I'm already planning to budget that $60 to pay for it, because it's pretty fabulous.

What I like: you can download you bank transactions from your bank website and upload into YNAB. You can edit or delete transactions as necessary, and categorize those transactions so that you have a crystal clear picture of where your money is going each month. When you receive a deposit, paycheck, or whatever, you can indicate that it is money available to use this month, or next month. If you indicate next month, then that money is not calculated into your this month's budget - it's "babysat" to be used next month. Any money from your budget that you don't use this month will roll over to be available for the next month.

They also offer online teaching webinars that you can sign up for to learn more about how their service works. It's pretty fabulous. I cannot say enough good things about this - and I'm only 3 days in.

Please check it out. 30 day free trial. You do NOT have to enter payment info in to try it - you simply download and start using. At the end of your trial, your software quits working unless you finally pay for it. So you run no risk of them automatically taking your money if you forget to cancel at the end of your trial. If you're like me though, you won't want to cancel.